


Want to Be There When You Laugh or Cry (But It Seems So Slow)

by cricket_aria



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Dark phoenix AU, F/M, Post-Endgame, soulbond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:07:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29166171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cricket_aria/pseuds/cricket_aria
Summary: Wanda wakes to a presence in her heart that she hasn't felt in years.
Relationships: Wanda Maximoff (MCU)/Peter Maximoff (XATM)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 40
Collections: Shotgun Wedding Flash Exchange





	Want to Be There When You Laugh or Cry (But It Seems So Slow)

Wanda woke clutching at her chest. She might have cried out if only she could have gotten the breath for it, but all she could manage were harsh gasps as she felt life once more fill the ragged hole in her heart that she’d expected to live with all the rest of her life. Felt herself sensed in return, a spark of surprised curiosity stretching back towards her.

The window closest to her, made like those in the homes of all Avengers of the most impervious glass that Stark Industries had ever managed to developed, shattered in a flare of red and she was out, gone, not even stopping to think she should leave word for one of the others in case it was some type of trap. Never even considering that a trap was _possible_ , no one could have forged that presence in her heart and fooled her with it. She barely even had enough presence of mind to grab her jacket off the back of a chair on the way out the door, only the thought of how he’d fret to see her thin sleep top in the cold she could feel outdoors making her think to grab it.

She didn’t use her powers to fly often, it was too draining by far to carry herself around for longer than the time it took to lower herself quickly from a height, but she took to the skies now without a single care about whether it might leave her too sapped to do a thing when she came down again. All that mattered was following the feeling of that presence to its source, feeling it growing stronger with every moment of flight.

Feeling it rushing closer to her in turn, far far faster than anyone save the person it was meant to be connected to could move, and if she’d allowed herself any doubt at all that would have wiped it away. She thought that he was close, maybe even within the same state, he would be upon her within minutes even if she were just to settle somewhere private and try to think about how she wanted to greet him beyond throwing her arms around him so tightly that nothing could ever drag him away again. But stopping would mean delaying reaching him, even if it was only for a moment, and that she couldn’t do. What did it matter if they were somewhere private? If their paths met right in the center of a freeway she wouldn’t even mind the traffic rushing around them.

He was counties away, he was miles, he was just across a city, he was a streak of dust she could see being churned up from her height and flung herself down towards with her arms already opening for him.

Only to stop dead in the air just above him when his head tilted back and his face _wasn’t Pietro’s._

She’d felt surprise from him, she realized numbly. She’d felt curiosity. She hadn’t felt _recognition._

He was grinning as he saw her, this boy with her brother’s powers and her brother’s feeling in her soul, reaching up to press his hand to his chest and call up, “Hey! Hey, that’s… this is you, isn’t it? I feel you.”

Then the smile dropped from his face and she could feel his interest morphing into worry as she felt the great cavern of grief that had lived in her heart for years reopening, stronger than ever for her having been foolish enough to hope that could escape from it. The powers that she’d been able to push to their limits in a haze of joy gave out suddenly and she dropped the last few feet from the sky, just feeling arms catching her before the grief overwhelmed all else and the world went black around her.

* * *

She woke in her own bed again, feeling a presence that seemed both nervous and worried both within her and beside her both proving the night before had been no mere nightmare. “Pietro,” she croaked, reaching out in spite of herself even as all her memories put themselves together and she knew that, no, it wasn’t.

But her hand was caught anyway, a voice as unfamiliar as the face it came out of saying, “How’d you know that name? Nobody’s called me that since I was a baby; when mom figured out dad was never turning back up she decided the name he gave me sounded too much like it might be Red to make the neighbors comfortable.”

She could feel her forehead furrowing as she finally opened her eyes and turned to look at him, searching for anything familiar in the face hovering beside her. “But it is Pietro?” she asked, trying to sort her way through whatever was happening.

“Peter, usually,” he said with a shrug, and suddenly her wallet was in his hands, dangling in front of her face, “We’ve got the same last name though, weird right?” he asked, tone casual but something in his eyes a tiny bit sharp and searching and something in her heart twisted, because that, _that_ was her brother’s look in his eyes. She could feel his own heart jumping out at her at the sudden burst of emotion, but apart from a surprised softening in his expression he didn’t react to it, turning her ID to his own face instead. “Sorry for digging through your wallet, but you suddenly passed out on me and my own home is… not there, apparently, so I had to figure out where to take you. Lucky the window was broken, you don’t seem to have any keys on you.”

“There’s a card for the doors,” she said numbly, watching his hands blur as her wallet seemed to just appear on her bedside table. “Your home isn’t there?”

“Look, I dunno,” he said, suddenly on the other side of the room and she could feel a twist of worry from him that wasn’t related to her. “I was in space, trying to get to one of my friends before the shuttle we were on exploded, then I got this feeling like _I_ wasn’t the one something wanted there and suddenly I was in the woods where the manor should be but there wasn’t any building there and then I felt _you._ ”

His words got faster and faster as he spoke, like in his worry he was forgetting to keep himself limited to what the ears of others could hear, but he was part of her. His heart would guide her to understanding even if her ears started to lose the thread of his exact words. Even as she thought that he stopped suddenly, at her side in a moment grasping for her hand. There was hope in his eyes, in his heart, that she didn’t know the source of, a rush of understanding from him that met her own. “I felt _you_ ,” he said, his voice hushed and reverent. “I could feel how you could feel me, no matter how fast I’m going. You can tell what I’m thinking, even if you can’t see me moving.”

“What you’re feeling,” she corrected, though it had always been almost the same. “Our souls are one.”

“Yeah. Yeah! Like soulmates, right?” His grin was back and his heart was certain as, moving faster than she’d ever even known the man he was a shadow of to go, he told her, “I’m going to marry you one day, you know that?”

She was brought up short at the words, blinking at him but somehow unsurprised with the steadiness of his heart to ground her. “You don’t even know me!”

His grin only grew wider as he pulled her hand forward to press it against his chest, to where she could feel the emotions spinning between them tangling her ever closer into a bond she’d thought was gone forever. “You can know me better than any ever does, when they only get to learn about me for as long as I can slow down to talk. I can know you better than I get to know anybody else, when I’m tearing through their bags and speed-reading their diaries because it takes too long to listen to their problems.” Then he glanced away, suddenly strangely shy for someone who had just proposed to her in their first few minutes of knowing each other, “It’s true love, right? In all the stories, when somebody meets their soulmate. You _loved me_ when you were coming to find me, I could feel it. Feeling it yanked me straight across the state to find you.”

“I loved who I felt in my heart,” she told him, truthful its way but finding herself unable to break this vulnerable moment by telling him the story of who she’d thought that would be. There would be time, after she was able to go to the others and try to work out exactly what happened. Ask Bruce precisely what he’d told the stones to do, if there was any way they might have taken his wish as instruction to bring back her long-dead brother with everyone else and if it might have taken them a few months to find some otherworldly version of him who still lived to slot into his place. “Nevertheless, I’m not going to marry any man who I’ve known for less than a day.”

“Lucky I said ‘one day’ then,” he said, cocky again at once, and suddenly he was on his feet, she was in his arms, they were in her kitchen where the counters were covered in different styles of eggs, sausages and bacon, pancakes and waffles, fruits and yogurts and anything one might want for breakfast. “I made you breakfast,” he told her, gesturing at the feast, “but I didn’t know what you’d like so I made everything I could think of. We can hand out the rest to any neighbors you like later. Consider this step one in being _wooed_ , Miss Maximoff.” 

He was not her brother. He was not the presence that she’d yearned to have return to her heart for so long. But, as she watched him eagerly watching for her approval she thought that just maybe she could be happy to have this Pietro, this Peter, there instead.

**Author's Note:**

> Peter crossed over by continuing the moving between shuttle with Kurt plan, and was up towards the front with Jean when Kurt was forced to poof back without them. The Phoenix Force only wanted Jean but Jean wanted to protect Peter, so instead of just letting the shuttle explosion kill him the Phoenix Force just chucked him away. Meanwhile, Bruce's trying to bring Nat back when he unsnapped the world was phrased something along the lines of bringing back everyone the team had lost in their fight, and that unused bit of his will had just been floating around the cosmos until it could latch onto a suddenly untethered from reality AU version of the person one member of the team most strongly felt the lose of from one of their fights.


End file.
